


Mountain Bloom

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 08:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17804258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: Frances settles things.





	Mountain Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr, where a lovely anon asked for an AU where Boyd leaves Harlan with Raylan when they're 19. So instead have Boyd talking to Frances Givens, mostly, because we all know how much I love mothers, don't we now?

Raylan cracks Dickie Bennett’s knee like an egg on Friday night. It’s better than prime time TV—all Harlan County is there for the game, chewing on their hot dogs and sipping their whiskey-laced sodas while they watch both teams flood the field and brawl. Raylan’s baseball career ends that night, one final swing that echoes through the hollers, ringing like a blast underground.

Frances settles it, though. Of course she does. Boyd can flick out his tongue and taste the tension in the air at his house, his daddy and Arlo and their men just waiting on Mags Bennett to start a war. But Frances Givens has stopped wars before.

Boyd’s mama used to tell him the story of how his friend Raylan’s mama put on her best dress and marched out and opened her mouth and brought everyone to heel, Raylan’s daddy and Boyd’s daddy and the Sorensons and their kin. Frances can wield her tongue like a bull whip, Boyd’s mama said, sitting on the trunk of their car with Bowman asleep in her arms, looking down from Clover Hill. “Don’t you forget that. Your daddy could have gone in there with his guns and set the county on fire, started a feud with no good end in sight. But Raylan’s mama put on her Sunday dress and she talked us out of a war. She probably saved her man’s sorry hide, and maybe Raylan’s, and yours, too. Ain’t never any telling where a feud will end. Your daddy’s teaching you to shoot, I know. But son, you remember that Frances Givens silenced a whole holler with nothing but a lace collar and her voice.”

Boyd’s mama ain’t there to see it now, but Frances Givens performs the same magic trick for a second time, slips into her visiting dress and talks Mags Bennett out of killing Raylan. Boyd drives into the mountains and picks Mrs. Givens all the flowers he can find, sweeps into Raylan’s driveway with a truck cab full of asters and cornflowers, goldenrod and bluebells.

“Are you sweet on my mama?” Raylan inquires, as he and Boyd and Mrs. Givens stuff flowers into every empty jar.

“Your mama’s the finest woman in Kentucky,” Boyd declares, and Mrs. Givens smiles. Boyd’s never heard Frances Givens laugh, not like Boyd’s mama used to, both hands on her belly and her face tilted to the sky. Frances Givens ain’t prone to laughter. It’s a quality she’s passed on to her son. But she smiles sometimes, the way Raylan smiles when he forgets to be wary of the world, the way he smiles when Boyd swaggers in ten minutes late to homeroom and drops unceremoniously into his seat and hands Raylan a full cup of coffee, sweet and black the way Raylan likes.

Mrs. Givens smiles Raylan’s soft smile at Boyd from behind a profusion of cornflowers, and Boyd wants to reach out and fold himself up in her arms, wants to lean in and smell the lingering scents of flour and fried chicken and stale cigarette smoke that always accompanied his mama’s hugs. He wants to tell her how grateful he is that she’s kept Raylan alive.

“I’m gonna take a shower.” Raylan sets down the goldenrod and sneezes his way through his declaration, covered in pollen, his eyes already red at the rims. “Put these goddamned flowers outside, and try not to elope together before I get back.”

He leaves Boyd and Mrs. Givens in the kitchen, surrounded by flowers in empty moonshine jars.

Boyd twists the hem of his shirt between his hands. He’s put on his Sunday shirt for this, his newest blue jeans. “Mrs. Givens, I wondered if I might … Well, you see, I was hoping to speak with you …” He stutters to a halt. Tries drinking some water out of a flower jar to wet his parched throat. Mrs. Givens watches him silently, Raylan’s brown eyes smaller in her face, her gaze worn as her apron and twice as fearsome as her son’s. Frances Givens put on her Sunday dress and spoke sense and everyone bowed their heads to obey. Boyd swallows, smooths down his shirt, and tries again. “Mrs. Givens, I’d like to talk to you about Raylan’s future.”

Frances Givens folds her arms and lifts her eyebrows. “Boyd Crowder, have you come to ask for my son’s hand in marriage?” she queries dryly, and Boyd feels all his blood rush to his cheeks.

“I – what?” he mumbles, and Mrs. Givens smiles at him, curls up one corner of her mouth and laughs at him with her eyes and she looks just like her son, then, her thin face and the reluctant twist of her lips and the quiet laughter dancing in her eyes. Sometimes they’ll be driving out into the hills, him and Raylan, and the radio will prompt Boyd to go off on a tear and he’ll glance over midway through his rant and Raylan will have that amused look on his face, that half smile, and Boyd will nearly drive the truck into a ditch because he can’t be bothered to look back at the road.

“He ain’t got much in the way of a dowry,” Mrs. Givens tells him, solemn but for the twinkle in her eye. “But I could be convinced to part with Arlo’s mother’s hideous quilts.” She doesn’t say anything about parting with Arlo, and Boyd’s too tongue-tied and too well raised to suggest it. “You might want to wait awhile, though,” she adds. “At least until you’re making the kind of money that will pay Raylan’s bail. It’s only a matter of time before my boy swings at the wrong man.”

“I think we should join the Army,” Boyd blurts out, because listening to Raylan’s mama talk about Boyd proposing is making Boyd’s stomach flip. She stops talking, at that. Her whole face goes still. “Raylan and I. I, uh, I think we should join up, just after we finish high school.” Mrs. Givens doesn’t say a word. Boyd wonders if his mama had the wrong end of the stick, somehow, and it wasn’t Frances Givens’s voice that put folks in their place, but the gimlet look in her eyes. “It’s a good career,” Boyd continues, filling the silence. “They’ll let you sign up with a friend, keep you together. They’ll pay for college, too. And I know it’s not the safest job, ma’am, but neither is coal mining, and there ain’t much in Harlan besides coal or – Well, I’m sure you’d prefer – Wouldn’t it be better if Raylan was swinging for the government? Then we wouldn’t need the money for bail.”

Boyd pants, feels like he’s been sprinting the bases like Raylan and Johnny used to do. Mrs. Givens watches him for a moment more, then she looks down at her table of flowers, adjusts a few asters in their jar.

“You talk to Raylan about this?” she finally asks, her face turned away, no hint in her voice as to her thoughts.

Boyd shakes his head. “No ma’am. Not yet.”

Mrs. Givens hums, considering, then lifts her head to peer at Boyd. “You after my blessing, son?” Boyd nods, then stops, not sure if he’s meant to answer. “You thought about what you’ll do if I tell you and your plans to go to hell?”

Boyd looks down at his hands, worrying his shirttails. He shakes his head. Frances Givens put on her best dress and spoke with a voice like the crack of a whip and the world went still. Boyd’s buttoned his shirt and practiced his speech and never once imagined that Raylan’s mama could say no.

“I. Uh.” Boyd purses his lips, sticks out his chin. “I suppose I’d ask him to join up no matter what you said, ma’am,” he answer honestly. “I think we could make a good life with the Army. I think it’s the best way out of Harlan that Raylan’s got.”

“You think all that, do you?” Mrs. Givens asks, sets her hands on her hips and stares unblinkingly at Boyd. “And you’ll be taking my son, with or without my permission?” She nods once, decisively, and Boyd feels his stomach plummet at the realization that he just told Mrs. Givens she and her disapproval could go to hell. “Good,” she declares, and Boyd hears the word from a distance, ringing faintly in his ears. “You’ll need more audacity than that, son, you want to build a life with Raylan. Now move out of my way, so I can go fetch you those quilts.”

* * *

They stretch out Granny Givens’s old quilts in the bed of Boyd’s truck, up in the mountains and away from the world, Raylan still sneezing occasionally, Boyd still in his Sunday shirt and his best jeans. It’s easy to ask Raylan to come away with him, knowing he has Mrs. Givens’s blessing, knowing he can open his mouth and speak with her voice.

“Is that why you brought Mama all those flowers?” Raylan wonders, after spending ten minutes arguing with Boyd about the Army just because Raylan’s an ornery son of a bitch at the best of times. He let Boyd go on for ten minutes before admitting he’d already been up to the recruitment center at Cumberland, had the papers in hand and was only biding his time to see if Boyd might be willing to come along. “To butter her up so she’d let you hogtie me and carry me away?”

“The flowers were because your mama is the finest woman in Kentucky,” Boyd insists. He doesn’t tell Raylan that the flowers were because Frances Givens put on her Sunday dress and met with Mags Bennett and spoke the words that saved Raylan’s life. He doesn’t tell Raylan any of that, but Raylan smiles softly at him all the same.


End file.
